Olney Friends School

Olney Friends Spanish teacher Brianna Robinson is one of several Quaker educators featured in a new video about international service released by the George School (Philadelphia, PA).

Robinson and other teachers from independent schools spent 16 days in Cuba last summer. They lived and worked at restoration in an evangelical Quaker church, spending mornings on construction tasks and afternoons volunteering at other sites nearby, including an orphanage. The work was a much-needed contribution to an area hit by Hurricane Ike the year before.

For more information about the service trip, see the video at http://www.eeford.org/grants/2008-educational-leadership-grants/george/index.aspx.

Colorful clothing, prayer rugs, and musical instruments were some of the many artifacts Kelly Cunnane brought to an interactive workshop on West African culture attended by Olney Friends School humanities students on February 4.

Cunnane has authored three children’s picture books, including the award-winning For You Are a Kenyan Child. Her interest in African culture began with service in the Peace Corps in Kenya. Over the years, she has taught English as a second language in a wide variety of countries around the world.

Cunnane lives in Maine. Her son attends Barnesville High School.

Science teacher Leonard Guindon has been named the Ohio Conservation Teacher of the Year by the Ohio Federation of Soil and Water Districts.

“Leonard is passionate about the environment and he inspires passion in his students. He involves them in local conservation efforts,” says Beverly Riddle, program administrator of the Belmont County Soil and Water Conservation District office.

She notes that Guindon involved students in applying for Federal funding to protect the Captina Creek watershed, whose head waters originate on the Olney campus.

Guindon and his students gathered data to support the successful application. As a result of their efforts, the Ohio Division of Wildlife created a watershed coordinator position to monitor and preserve the health of the waters, which flow into the Ohio River.

Other student projects have included reforestation, counting fish to monitor water quality, and assisting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) with stream water monitoring.

“His students compete each spring in the Envirothon and they always finish near or at the top,” says Riddle. The competition tests students’ knowledge of ecology and environmental issues.

On the Olney Friends School campus, Guindon’s students have sponsored a Green Cup Challenge to inspire their classmates and teachers to reduce energy usage.

Last year, students succeeded in reducing the school’s electricity usage by 12% and its natural gas consumption by 9.5%.

Olney Friends School is located on 350 acres in the foothills of the Appalachians. For more information about biology and environmental science programs at Olney, please call 740-425-3655.

Olney Friends School is pleased to announced the winner of the first annual Flash Fiction contest, in which high school students from Ohio and West Virginia were invited to submit one-page stories to be judged by Esquire editor Tom Chiarelli.

The winning story, “Long Live the Average,” was written by a ninth-grader at Olney, Kerri Rogers. “It’s about a girl who decides she needs to fit in and the things she gives up to try to get friends. She has to decide whether or not it was really worth it,” says Rogers.

The contest was initiated by humanities teacher Abby Chew. The school has lobbied nationally to declare October National Fiction Month.

Rogers is a day student at Olney. She lives in Bethesda.

For her winning efforts, she received a $100 cash prize provided by Wesbanco Barnesville.

It came down to the final four seconds in the eBay auction: a property in Arizona transferred hands from Ruth ’45 and Roy Joe Stuckey to Steve and Charlene Miller of Xenia, Ohio. The result? A donation of $1,501 to Olney Friends School.

“I placed our single maximum bid with two minutes and 20 seconds left on the bidding. Then the final contender entered the bidding with three successively higher bids, ending at $1,500 with four seconds left. I told Char we won but I had to spend more than the $1,500 we agreed on. She laughed when I told her it was just a dollar more,” Steve Miller says.

What are their plans for the land? “We are hanging pictures of the property on our Christmas tree so we can start dreaming about the future. Perhaps it will become a place to spend time as a family,” he says.

The Millers heard about the auction directly from the Stuckeys. Steve and Roy Joe serve together on the board of the Little Miami River Partnership, a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring and protecting local water quality.

Steve is an environmental consultant and auditor. Charlene is executive vice president of Deceuninck North America, a Belgian research and manufacturing company located in Monroe, Ohio. Their daughter Megan is a senior at Yellow Springs High School.

Megan has attended Friends Music Camp on the Olney campus for five summers. The program, which is independently run, brings approximately 75 middle and high school students to Barnesville for several weeks each year.

The Millers live in an 1840 brick farmhouse on 18-19 acres along the Little Miami River. Their home was a former stop on the Underground Railroad, by which escaping slaves from the South were guided northward before Emancipation.

Roy Joe Stuckey is quick to note that “Olney people” have had a continuing relationship with this part of the Arizona desert since four classmates from the graduating class of 1920 – Ruth’s parents, Jesse and Clara (Bedell) Starbuck, and Chester and Florence (Hall) Emmons – bought two properties from a developer decades ago.

Three generations of Olneynites and other Friends have made their homes in the area over the years, he says.

Those who have lived in the region include Willie ’43 and Anna Mae ’43 (Starbuck) Moffitt, Paul ’47 and Carol (Allen) ’52 Livezey, Lewis ’52 and Wanda ’52 Stratton, Roy and Wanda Knight, and Burt and Birdie Kissling.

“Our hope is that by doing these little things for Olney, we will encourage a fourth generation to enjoy this beautiful place, as have those before them,” he says.

The donation by Ruth ’45 and Roy Joe Stuckey will be allocated half to the Olney annual fund and half to the A Time to Build campaign.

A parcel of land in Arizona will be auctioned on eBay beginning November 23 to benefit Olney Friends School. The property is located in the Arizona desert, about two hours southeast of Tucson near the Mexican border. With no present electric line, the property is considered “off grid.” The auction will run for one week.

The lot is located approximately one mile from the winter home of the Stuckeys. “I want to give the full proceeds from the sale of Cochise College Park Unit Ten, Lot 3876, to Olney because of my appreciation for the education and all-around good experience I had there during my high school years,” says Ruth. She notes the property provides an excellent opportunity for innovative solar or other alternative energy use for a small house.

Director of Development Mary Sidwell (Hon.), who visited the area several years ago for an alumni gathering, reports the area is very beautiful, with views of mountains around it and a big sky over it. “Whether you are looking for an investment, for a warm place to park your RV for the winter, or a spot in the desert to build an off-grid retreat, we suggest checking out this opportunity. It is a delightful place to explore, particularly in the winter months,” she says.

A description of the property and a slide show of the surrounding area will be posted on eBay.

Olney Friends School has asked Ohio 6th District Congressman Charlie Wilson to support legislation to declare October National Fiction Month.

“Novels are the mostly widely read books in our libraries. It’s time to celebrate our love of stories, to reread the books we loved as children, to invigorate our imaginations again,” says Humanities teacher Abby Chew.

Olney wil embark on its own celebration of a month of reading fiction in the company of visiting writer Reif Larsen, author of the critically acclaimed novel The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet. Larsen will read Wednesday, October 7, at 7:30 pm and follow with a question and answer session.

Admission is free and open to the public. The reading will be held in the Collection Room on the Olney Friends School campus. Directions to campus can be found on the school’s website, www.olneyfriends.org.

Humanities teacher Abigail Chew was awarded the George G. Skinner & Lela Skinner Bailey Teaching Development Award for professional development. The award is given each year to a teacher in the Barnesville School District to acknowledge teachers who go “the extra mile.”

As noted in the nomination document, “Abby is a peer exemplar, teaching classes outside of her area, going to workshops and conferences to support her teaching, chairing the humanities department, coordinating the curriculum, modeling best practices in her classroom and leading the faculty toward a curricular and practical approach to sustainable living.

“Abby takes remarkable initiative in her classroom. She initiated a link between her ninth grade humanities class and the ninth grade biology class. This cross-disciplinary approach has made it possible for students to see connections among art, history, social science and biology; the linkage goes by the theme of ‘Survival.’

“She has been very responsive to the international students in her classes, going the extra mile to both integrate their perspectives, and share Western / American perspectives.

“She is the most resourceful person on the entire staff for seeing opportunities and following through on bringing in outside presenters.”